


everyone knows you're going to live, so you might as well start trying

by elsinorerose



Series: out here in the dark [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, One-sided?, Resurrection Ritual, and coping, and words, caleb is bad at feelings, future fic? technically?, i suppose we'll have to see, references to trent ikithon and the academy, vague background beau/yasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 01:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/pseuds/elsinorerose
Summary: "Jester is dead. Everyone is talking and Yasha and Beau are dragging one of the beds out into the middle of the room as Fjord walks in, Jester’s body limp in his arms, and Caduceus is pulling flowers and herbs out of his bag and arranging them in a circle on the floor, and Nott takes another gulp from her flask, and none of it matters becauseJester is dead,because they were all too slow or too stupid or too careless and they didn’t save her."Caleb makes an offering.





	everyone knows you're going to live, so you might as well start trying

**Author's Note:**

> Set sort of vaguely in the future sometime. Title from "Firewood" by Regina Spektor.

Jester is dead.

Everyone is talking and Yasha and Beau are dragging one of the beds out into the middle of the room as Fjord walks in, Jester’s body limp in his arms, and Caduceus is pulling flowers and herbs out of his bag and arranging them in a circle on the floor, and Nott takes another gulp from her flask, and none of it matters because _Jester is dead,_  because they were all too slow or too stupid or too careless and they didn’t save her.   
  
“Lay her down right there,” says Caduceus as he finishes his circle around the bed, and Fjord gently lowers Jester onto the blankets and pillows that Beau fluffed up moments before, clearly desperate to do something to help.   
  
Caleb can’t seem to stop swallowing. He’s terrified. Somehow it’s worse than those dreadful, dark moments in the immediate aftermath of her death, before Caduceus made it back to them from across the battlefield and told them that he had a spell that might save her — somehow the fear makes it worse, the hope makes it worse. Not that he would rather there were no chance. He would just rather…not be awake for this. He wishes he could borrow Nott’s flask and drink till he passes out.

He wishes that Kryn warrior had swung an axe at him instead.   
  
“Have you ever cast this spell before?” Nott is asking, her voice wavering.   
  
“No, but I know what to do.” Caduceus traces symbols on the floor around the bed amidst his herbs and flowers, three large runes and a series of smaller glyphs. “It’s a ritual spell. A prayer to the Wildmother, and then three of you can make an offering to help strengthen the magic. Words, a plea, something that will reach her. And a gift, something material. Something that matters to you.”   
  
Caleb can’t think of anything important enough from him that  Jester would pay attention to it, wherever she is, or anything he could say that could empower her to fight her way back to them. He’ll leave that to the others. He’d be no use to anyone like this right now anyway. He’s not sure he could even speak.   
  
Caduceus asks Beau to draw the shutters closed on the windows. It’s late afternoon, almost evening, and the sun is starting to sink. It took them an hour to get back to the inn, and Caduceus says that’s fine, it won’t make a difference, but Caleb rages at every minute wasted between then and now. She should have been resurrected immediately. She shouldn’t have had to be dead for one minute, one second. It’s blasphemy.   
  
He realizes that Caduceus has begun praying. The circle on the floor starts to glow, slowly, slightly, with a blue-green hue, like Jester’s skin and the green of the plants strewn around the bed. Caduceus holds up his hands in a sort of benediction and says gently, “Does anyone have an offering they’d like to contribute?”   
  
Nott clears her throat and takes a step forward.   
  
“Go ahead.”   
  
She clasps her small hands and moves closer to the bed, and in a shaky voice Caleb hears her say, “I’m not very good at this sort of thing…never was, really…I haven’t really been to a lot of…funerals, I guess…not even my own…” There’s a pause as she stops and takes another drink from her flask. “And I never was much of a — a god-fearing goblin. But you’ve taught me about so many things. And your god seems pretty amazing if he’s got people like you worshiping him. So — and I guess this is really more for the Traveler than for Jester, but — if you give her back to us, count me in. I’ll spread your word and pray to you and stuff and do, like…whatever it is people are supposed to do for you. I guess Jester will have to teach me.”   
  
Caleb feels something wrench deep inside him as Nott reaches into her pocket and pulls out a battered, slightly torn pamphlet to the Traveler and sets it gingerly on the pillow beside Jester’s head. There is the smallest breath of a breeze from nowhere that ruffles the page, and then one of the large runes that Caduceus had traced on the floor lights up the shadowed room with a gleam.   
  
“Who would like to go next?” asks Caduceus softly.   
  
A moment of silence, and then Beau steps up, jaw clenched, and, shifting her weight slightly from foot to foot, begins, “Hey, Jessie…”   
  
She starts talking about how she never had many friends growing up, much less a best friend, and then Caleb stops listening because his gaze, fixed on the Traveler pamphlet at first, has been drawn down Jester’s body to the one place he has spent the past hour trying not to look: the axe wound in her stomach, where the blood has not fully dried, gaping through her torn dress. A wave of nausea nearly overcomes him and he has to shut his eyes tight, breathe through his mouth and dig his fingernails hard into his palms to keep control. He has seen bloody wounds before — has seen them on Jester before — but of course this time is different. This time — the refrain sounds again in his head, like a dull and distant bell — Jester is dead.   
  
When he opens his eyes, Beau has placed a red feather in Jester’s right hand where it rests limp beside her. It looks familiar, although Caleb can’t place its significance. “We had to rescue you once,” murmurs Beau. “Come home to us again, okay?”   
  
A few seconds pass, and then the feather glows, almost, its red suddenly more vibrant and joyful than before, and the second rune on the floor lights up in response. Beau lets out a sigh of relief as she steps back, clasping her hands together behind her neck.   
  
Caduceus nods and gestures to the third rune. “One more person. Whoever wants to volunteer.”   
  
Caleb looks instinctively at Fjord, and he’s not the only one — Nott is looking too, and Yasha. But Fjord shakes his head, eyes fixed on the floor. Why, exactly, Caleb isn’t sure. Perhaps he feels that it would be too much for him, or that it’s not his place. Absurdly, hot anger flares up in Caleb’s heart. _She needs you right now, you idiot, get over yourself,_ he wants to shout.   
  
Beau clears her throat. “Caleb, you should go.”   
  
His throat goes dry. “Oh. Ah…no. I don’t…”   
  
“You should,” pipes up Nott. “You two are close.”   
  
_I’ve got nothing,_ he wants to tell them, but if Fjord isn’t going to go, who else? Yasha? Does Yasha have the words for a plea that will reach Jester, whatever that means? Caleb might not either, but at least he has…he has…   
  
“All right,” he says quietly.   
  
Beau pats him on the back. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him as he approaches the bed, careful not to step on any of the ritual components, and his cheeks begin to burn. It’s too much.   
  
“Would it be all right if you all stepped outside for a minute?” he asks without turning around.   
  
He hears mutters of assent and footsteps as the rest of the Nein, minus Caduceus, file out the door into the hallway. When they’re gone, he allows himself to look at Jester’s face, unguarded.   
  
She is lovely, even with speckles of blood around her lips and mud drying on the side of her face. He wonders what he will say to her, and what kind of gift he can offer. Gold? Jewels? Meaningless. His spellbook? She would never accept that and rob him of his magic. What else does he have? He has never been one to collect material possessions.   
  
“Go ahead,” Caduceus prompts, and Caleb has to take a few deep breaths before he trusts himself to speak.   
  
“Jester,” he says. Half-whispers, really. It is all he can do. “I’m not sure what to…”   
  
A ray of setting sunlight through the shuttered window lies across her neck and shoulder. He focuses on that.   
  
“You know, we have been walking in darkness for a long time…” He swallows, stares at his feet, feeling stupid, wishing Caduceus didn’t have to stand here to hear this, wishing he could control his face and stop himself from blushing so hard — but a glance at Jester’s pale face and such thoughts cease to matter. “But you…you are light. Not just to me, to all of us.” There is a tightness in his throat that’s hard to talk around, even in a whisper. “We so desperately need you. So desperately.”   
  
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Caduceus’s hands tremble ever so slightly as he maintains the ritual spell, and Caleb’s own hands clench unconsciously into fists. To steady himself he reaches out and takes one of Jester’s cold hands in his own, but at the touch of her skin a fresh stab of fear twists in his gut and he hears himself drawing a very ragged, very un-steadied breath.   
  
He had been meaning to say more about what she means to them as a group, how important her laughter and her kindness and her faith in others has always been to each of them, but suddenly that is all out of his head and he is talking about himself.

“I have been living in my past for most of my life,” he hears himself say, “I have carried it with me everywhere I go, and it is so heavy, Jester, I know you have noticed that, and I have never been prepared to set it down, because I do not know…I do not know…who I would be without it. But now I am beginning to learn the answer to that question, and a lot of that is because of you.”  
  
He knows, suddenly, what he must offer to the ritual, and though the cost makes him feel sick, he does not for even a split second entertain the thought of not paying it.   
  
“You see it didn’t really feel like so much of an anchor, really, until I met you. But I want to look toward the future now, and —” For the first time today the pressure behind his eyes threatens to spill over into tears. “I want you to be in it, Jester. Please.”   
  
He drops her hand so that he can reach into his coat to the holster strapped against his left side, and removes the battered leather journal hidden there, the record of his time at the academy, and of later, after the asylum, pages and pages filled with rage and pain and obsession, a catalogue of his helplessness and guilt. Here are all the notes he has taken on his quest for knowledge and power, all his secret ambitions scribbled through a haze of smoke and screams.   
  
He lays it down on Jester’s chest and steps back.   
  
“You, um…you wish that I could move past this stuff and be happy, I know you do.” The others are coming back into the room; he can hear their footsteps creaking on the wooden floorboards, though he doesn’t take his eyes off Jester’s face. “So that’s the deal: you come back, and I’ll do my best. You come back, and I’ll do my best.”   
  
He doesn’t know what else to say. The rest of the Nein have gathered around the bed again, and Caduceus traces another glyph in the air, head bowed, asking the Wildmother to accept this offering. Caleb is weak in the knees. Beside him Nott sniffs and Beau clears her throat roughly as they wait to see what happens.   
  
With a small _pop!_ like an ember in a campfire, the journal on Jester’s chest bursts into flame. Nott gives a little startled squeak and Fjord lunges forward as if to try to put out the fire, but Caduceus hastily holds up a hand — the book is burning unnaturally fast, reduced to cinders in a matter of seconds, and Jester’s body appears unaffected. The two glowing runes in the circle around her bed are joined by a third, and all three flare suddenly in a burst of greenish blue light before, just as abruptly, vanishing completely.   
  
There is silence. Even with the late afternoon sun coming through the slats of the shuttered windows, the room seems unnaturally dark in the absence of the ritual runes. Caleb can’t seem to breathe. A little pile of ash is all that remains of his journal on Jester’s body, so it must have worked, surely, that means his offering was accepted, doesn’t it? So she must be coming back. It’s just a matter of time now. She’ll open her eyes, and she’ll sit up, and she’ll make a joke, something half-hearted because she’s exhausted and in pain but still wants to see them all smile, and they will, it will be the best joke they’ve ever heard, and then Caduceus will be telling her to take it easy and rest and Fjord will start trying to shoo them all out of the room…   
  
She hasn’t woken up. Dimly he hears Nott’s voice, falsely optimistic, asking Caduceus how long it’s supposed to take. Caduceus doesn’t answer.   
  
Caleb knows it’s been exactly twenty-six seconds since the runes went out. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.   
  
A choked-off sob comes from Beau as she turns to hide her face against Yasha, whose arm instinctively wraps around her.

Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four.   
  
“How long do we have to wait?” Fjord echoes gruffly to Caduceus, who just shakes his head.   
  
Thirty-five. Thirty-six. There is a familiar flood of panic rising in Caleb’s stomach and he thinks he might be sick.   
  
“Caduceus,” pleads Nott —   
  
A gasp from the bed, and Jester is coughing, sending ash everywhere, one hand flying up to cover her mouth as stray droplets of blood spray out.

Caleb falls to his knees. Nott is already at the side of the bed, weeping, and Beau is muttering “thank fuck, thank fuck,” over and over, and Fjord has sat down heavily in the nearest chair with his face in his hands, and Jester is alive, she is breathing and moving and awake and Caleb needs to be somewhere else right now. Anywhere else. He picks himself up off the floor somewhat shakily and presses the back of his hand hard against his mouth and walks out the door.   
  
The room he shares with Nott is two doors down. He stumbles in and locks the door behind him with unsteady hands before he lets himself sink down to the floor, back to the wall, taking deep breaths, trying to keep himself from throwing up, but it doesn’t matter if he does, because Jester is alive. His eyes flutter shut and he sees her sitting up and coughing still, the best thing he’s ever seen. He’s not going to cry, he’s fine, but he can’t seem to stop gasping for breath, so he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes until he sees stars and thanks the Wildmother and the Traveler and every other god he’s ever heard of…Ioun, the Storm Lord, the Dawnfather, Erathis…   
  
Trent Ikithon’s face swims into his mind and he sucks in his breath with a hiss. “Fuck you,” he growls. “I’m done with you. I burned it, it’s gone. You lost.”   
  
There’s a gentle knock at the door. “Caleb?” It’s Nott. “Is it okay if I come in?”   
  
For a moment he thinks about not responding, then gets to his feet and unlatches the door. Nott’s still got tear trails on her green skin but she’s smiling. As soon as the door is open wide enough she steps through and hugs Caleb around the waist.   
  
“She’s going to be fine,” she says, giving him a squeeze. “Under strict orders to get lots of sleep tonight and no solid foods till tomorrow, for some reason. Caduceus closed up her wounds and he’s making her some tea.”   
  
“That’s good,” he replies vaguely. “Good thinking, probably.”   
  
Nott pulls back and wipes at her cheeks with one sleeve. “That was really scary, I was worried, for a while —”

“Ja, well, you know, Caduceus knows what he is doing, she was in good hands.” He’d prefer not to relive those thirty-six seconds even in memory. “Why don’t we go out and see if we can find something nice for when she wakes up? There should still be some shops open at this hour.”  
  
“Yes, let’s get some fresh air,” Nott agrees.   
  
He follows her out of the room, scratching at his arms out of old habits, feeling almost jittery with the adrenaline of fear and relief still coursing through him. There is an unspoken agreement that neither one of them is ready to go back into Jester’s room. Distraction, that’s what they need. Sunlight. Shopping.   
  
They have made it downstairs and are about to walk out of the inn when Nott speaks up again. “Oh, Jester said to say thank you. For what you said.”   
  
Caleb stops in his tracks. “What?”   
  
“Yeah, she said it was really nice.”   
  
“I, ah…” He can feel heat rising up his neck. “I didn’t know she could…” _Well of course she could hear you,_ dummkopf, _that was the whole point of the ritual._ “Ah, that is, I didn’t suppose she would remember any of that. You know, she was unconscious.”   
  
“Oh no, she remembers everything,” says Nott cheerfully. “She’s very excited to start teaching me about the Traveler. I guess we’re starting tomorrow. Did you say something about the Traveler too? Are you going to join me for lessons?”   
  
Caleb can’t help a small smile. “Ah, no, but maybe I will sit in on one or two, just for fun.”   
  
Nott begins outlining her plans for spoiling Jester tomorrow, starting with breakfast in bed and a live reading from “Tusk Love,” as they exit the inn and start making their way towards the nearest shop. Caleb half-listens, preoccupied with the knowledge that Jester knows every word he said in that dark room that feels so long ago. He isn’t sure how he’ll face her come tomorrow morning. It simply hadn’t occurred to him at the time. Why would anything else matter, why would anything else even count, besides doing and saying whatever was necessary to bring her back to him?   
  
_Well, there are worse things I could have said._ He scuffs the ground with his shoe as he walks along. _Small mercies._   
  
“Hurry up, Caleb!” urges Nott from a few yards ahead. He’s fallen behind with his thoughts. Feeling slightly off-balance without the familiar weight of his journal in its holster at his side, he catches up with her and rests a hand on her shoulder.   
  
“Sorry,” he smiles down at her. “You were saying…”   
  
His heart is a little off-balance too, he warily admits to himself, but there’s no need to worry about that right now. He’s got a whole future ahead of him.

_fin_


End file.
